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The war created special problems for women whose husbands had gone off to fight. Army pay was low. It also wasn’t steady. So these women had to support their families.
They also had to protect themselves and their children from enemy soldiers. Farm women had to learn how to do the men’s work of planting and harvesting. But they still had to run their households. They had to feed their families. Plus, they had to grow enough food to supply the army. Nonfarming women sometimes took over their husbands’ businesses. Some did well at that. Others had to sell the businesses because they weren’t trained to run them.
◀ In June 1779, British General Henry Clinton encouraged slaves owned by Patriots to escape. He promised that once they got behind British lines they would be free. In South Carolina and Georgia alone, 10,000 slaves took his advice. Some got their freedom after the war. Most met a cruel fate. British officers sold some of them to work on sugar plantations in the West Indies. Others were returned to their masters.
◀ Colonial society thought that a woman shouldn’t take a public position. But Esther Reed organized 36 leading Philadelphia women. They raised $300,000 for Washington’s army. Then they made 2,200 linen shirts for the fighting men. Other Patriot women sewed regimental banners or knitted socks for soldiers. They also wove cloth for uniforms.
When troops were in the area, women often had to let officers stay in their homes. This gave the women no privacy. They had to share food, which was hard to find. And they had to do more household chores. Sometimes the soldiers were mean to them and broke things.
The story is that seamstress Betsy Ross made the new country’s first flag. But the first time her grandson told that story was almost 100 years after the Revolution began. Today, most historians doubt his story. There are no written records to show it is true. Even so, Ross was a strong Patriot. Her first and second husbands died for the Revolution. That left her with two small children to support on her own. ▶
Many Loyalist women escaped to British-held areas. They often came to refugee camps without a penny. One camp was at Charleston, South Carolina. Near the end of 1781, more than 200 Loyalist women and children died there every day. Disease or exhaustion killed them.
Colonial women were expected to do housework. Politics and business were men’s work. But many women put their anti-British opinions in writing. Mercy Otis Warren (right) published plays that made fun of Loyalists. Phillis Wheatley was a slave of Loyalists. She wrote poems that supported the Patriot cause. Many people spread false rumors, but publisher Mary Katherine Goddard was known for printing the truth in her Baltimore newspaper. That’s why the Second Continental Congress chose her to publish copies of the Declaration of Independence. These were distributed to the states. ▶
